Corporate Social Responsibility

Reduce the vessel collisions with whales

Each year, approximately 300 whales come the southern coast of Sri Lanka. Pigmy blue whales and other whales feed and breed in this area. The same area is crossed by more than 5,000 ships per month. Whales are hit over 1,000 times by vessels. 50 of these strikes are likely to be lethal for the rare pygmy blue whales.

LKsim is planning to develop a real-time application to visualize commercial vessels and whales. We believe it will minimize the conflict between commercial vessels and whales. Commercial vessels can be localized by Automatic Identification System (AIS). It is an automatic tracking system used on ships and by vessel traffic services. However, the most challenging problem is the detection of whales. There are array of instruments conceived by biologists and engineers to localize whales. Studies suggest that the sounds of ship’s propellers, military sonars, or explosions during oil and gas explorations and whale watching boats affect the natural habitat of whales.

LKsim is looking for the support of government agencies, conservation groups, private sector organizations and academic institutions to successfully address this issue. The schematic visualization of the proposed solution is given below.

Dondra Head Vessel Traffic

This is a sample scenario (Form 2016.1.18, 1800 to 2016.1.20, 1200) and several traffic zones were defined to describe the scenario.